There was a small, easily missed flash of light in the air above Houston Texas, and Tailyellow emerged from it to hover far above the earth. She was floating higher than any mountain, even higher than any commercial plane would fly, kilometres and kilometres away from the ground far below. She was far too small and much too high up to be detected by the radars down below. She was a good student, so she knew all this and found it somewhat disappointing.
"Oh, if only there was someone to see this." She murmured as she began to shed her armour. The chunks of white enameled gold plating fell away, only to come together and form the shape of a large gun in the air behind her. Her pauldrons and missile packs slotted together with the breastplates and chain guns, until a large canon floated in the air just behind her. The last piece was a small pistol shaped plasma caster, that Yellow threw up for it to arc around and slot into the weapon and form it's trigger.
Scarcely able to wait with the anticipation roiling through her veins, she curled up into a little ball just in front of the canon. A manic gleam sparked in her eyes as she shouted aloud. "Vultic Judgement!"
Blue arcs of electricity poured off the weapon, and there was a roar of power as she was fired directly upwards towards the sky. Traveling at such speeds she rocketed past the blue border of Earth's atmosphere, the distant horizon fading and transitioning to a starry sky that surrounded her in all directions. Without the blue veil of Earth's atmosphere blocking her vision, yellow could finally see the great ring the Elemerians had built. Using the ribbon Elemera, she changed her angle to aim towards the large glowing section at the far end of it. It looked almost like an incredibly thin wedding ring, with the source of its power attached to one end of the structure in a large bunker.
She was traveling a greater distance than it took an astronaut to get to the moon, and where that journey took days she accomplished it in a matter of minutes. The astronaut would go by rocket ship, with all the safety measures imaginable in place, but she was doing it nearly naked and with no help possible, well outside the range of the secret base's spacejump catapult. If something went wrong, if she failed, there was no back up and no retrying.
For most people these thoughts would be daunting, but for Yellow they weren't even in her mind. High on her Tailsuit's side effect, all she could think about was just how fast she was going, and just how hard the landing would be. The ring loomed larger and larger in her vision, hundreds of kilometres wide, with the power plant being it's sole visible feature from a distance.
The Elemerian's manning the device had no idea she was coming. One moment they were preparing to gloriously harvest all of the Earth's valuable attributes, and then in the next the roof exploded inwards. Yellow struck the metal of the deck with a boom and thunk that sent the various aliens flying off their feet, and tore up the floor in a ripple like wave.
"By the blemishless carapace of Ultimateguildy, what is that thing?!" A voice cried out as Yellow climbed to her feet, breathing heavily.
She surveyed her surroundings, seeing three insect themed Elemerians staring at her in disbelief. Most of her energy had been used in her journey here, but she was far from finished. With a deep throated grunt of exertion, she summoned up the only weapon she still could, a small plasma caster shaped like a handgun.
She went to fire it with her right hand, but found she couldn't raise it very high, and when she glanced across her entire arm was just hanging limp. With some effort, she reached across with her left hand and pulled the weapon out of her numb fingers.
"I know who that is!" One of the Elemerians shouted, taking a step backwards. "That's Tailyell-"
Three plasma bolts slammed into his chest, and he fell to the deck before exploding.
"You dare?!" One of the remaining ones shouted and pulled a massive two handed axe off his back. He then charged Yellow, swinging it in a wide arc towards her neck.
Yellow went to dodge, but her legs gave out under her and she inelegantly collapsed to the floor, though luckily the axe did miss her. Just firing those few shots had used up almost all of her last reserves of energy, and she still had to defeat these last Elermians.
"Die!" He cried and swung downwards at her, and Yellow desperately grabbed his leg and pulled. "Wha-?!" The large alien toppled over backwards.
Throwing herself forwards on her belly, Yellow all but crawled over the Elemerian and shoved her pistol directly in his face and squeezed the trigger. He exploded beneath her, and Yellow was flung her head over heels to slam into the deck on her back. Blackness was already pressing against the edges of her vision, and she realised she was about to pass out. Looking across the room, she just caught sight of the final alien reaching for her with her bare palms.
All she could do was squeeze the trigger of her gun, and the alien yelled as he was struck in the ankle and hopped backwards, holding his ankle. It was too much. Yellow was already about to pass out, and with no choice left she cancelled her transformation.
"Yooooouuu!" He howled with frustration, and hopped forward to take a swipe at Erina. Suddenly the giant insect man looked different in her eyes. With her mind cleared from the euphoria of being Yellow, her foe loomed large over her and his claws had enough power to take her head clean from its shoulders. Real fear shot through her, and she scrambled backwards just out of his reach.
"Come back here!" He snarled after her, still hopping on one foot.
Standing up, she turned and ran away, stumbling but staying on her feet as she windmilled her arms to keep balance. There was a ledge directly in front of her, one that she almost ran straight over in her panic. A massive drop dawned before her, the floor a distant kilometre away. She glanced about and realised the sheer size of the room that she was in, with all the walls kilometers away. There were other Elemerians in view on the other side of the abyss, their forms nothing but silhouettes shrunk and blurred by distance. In the middle of the floor far below was a column of blue glass, filled with arcing lightning. There were light grey stripes on the ground leading up to it, distinct in colour from the dark flooring around it. Far above her head, the roof looked like a hollow tinfoil ball that had been bent out of shape by someone jamming their finger into it. She could only assume that was where she crashed through the structure.
"Diiiiiiie!" The Elemerian behind her shouted, and Erina threw herself to one side just in time to avoid his outstretched claw. "Noooooooooooo!" He screeched as he overbalanced and toppled face first into the abyss.
Whatever his fate at the bottom was, Erina didn't see it, as she was pale faced and scrambling away from the ledge where one of her legs had terrifyingly gone over in the course of her evasion. It was only when she was far enough away from the edge that she breathed out and sat down to catch her breath.
Far away, on the other side of the abyss some Elemerians had noticed her and were beginning to move towards her. They were too far off to do anything right away, but they would reach her fairly soon at the speed they were moving.
It was obvious what she had to do. That glass column was a high tech powersource of some kind if her superhero shows were anything to judge by, and they hadn't led her astray so far. One more shot with the Yellow suit might be enough to knock her out, but it would also be enough to save the world.
Heaving herself back up to her feet, Erina concentrated for a moment and became Tailyellow once more. This time there was no need to hold back. With her armour and weapons all restored to her, she raised her rotating chain guns as missile pods unfolded over her chest. Larger canons emerged from her pauldrons on each shoulder, while smaller versions appeared on her hip. She aimed all of these weapons at the large structure and fired.
The glass column was torn to pieces in an instant, great columns of lightning breaking free of it and roasting attending Elemerians who exploded. Pieces of it rained to the floor, many of them larger than a school bus, and delicate internal parts became nothing but smoke and a shower of sparks.
That was all Yellow got to see. With all her energy expended, her eyes rolled up and she collapsed to the floor.
"Heavenly BACKHAND!" A glowing hammer was launched from Tailpink's hands, crossing the distance to the glowing reactor and shattering it into a thousand pieces. As the power within the machine began to destabilise, she turned and ran towards the open loading ramp of Twoearle's ship. Without delay, Twoearle closed the ramp and the ship took off immediately, moving out of range of the deadly fallout that shot from the power plant. Pink watched through the rear window as after a few minutes the light became smaller and smaller before disappearing entirely, leaving the ring intact but without power.
For Pink, the journey to Catyu's ring was far less eventful than her allies. The Elemerians hadn't tried to intercept her, and the few that had been in place to defend the power plant were garden variety. Despite the battle's she'd already fought that day they were pretty easily defeated. It was something of a disappointment, really. She hadn't even gotten to use her dual modules.
"Now what?" She asked Twoearle as she stepped onto the bridge of the ship.
"Now I'm going to have to figure out a way to move that stupid ring somewhere it won't cause any harm to future generations, but for now Catyu is safe."
"No, I mean what do we do now?"
Twoearle groaned and rubbed a hand over her face. "I don't know. We need to find out if Yellow succeeded on her end, and if she hasn't we've got a limited window to finish the job for her or Earth will lose it's attributes permanently."
"So why don't we just do that?"
"Because I need to find a way to get this ship." She patted her armrest. "To Earth in the next thirty minutes or so, and it's not big enough to go through the portal I constructed. Without it there's no way for us to get up to the ring quickly enough."
"Okay, I get it." She sat down and undid the transformation as she did. "Yeah, that's tricky."
"I know." Twoearle agreed. "Without a portal the fastest way to get to earth is a month long journey in between universes."
"Right…" Isabella hummed with understanding, then paused. "Wait. How did Orchidmantisguildy get to Earth so quickly from Catyu, then?"
Suddenly Twoearle shot up in her seat, and shouted loudly in an excited voice. "He must have built his own portal! After I moved the universes closer it would have been a lot easier for him!"
"So we just need to find the Elemerian portal?"
"Exactly!" Twoearle laughed maniacally and seized the ships controls. "I'm a genius!"
"I mean, I feel like I helped a lot there, but whatever." Isabella mumbled to herself.
"Now just to figure out where they're hiding their portal…" Twoearle brought up a tab that displayed a map of the solar system. "Let's see… Meowcury, Meows, Jupawter, hmm… Man this is a lot of cat puns."
Isabella raised an eyebrow in confusion. "What the heck is a 'cat'?"
"Catsanus, seriously?" Twoearle snorted and ran her fingers through her hair.
"I don't get the joke?" Isabella admitted.
"They'd need a lot of metal to build it, so that means it would have to be close to one of the asteroid fields, and it would probably be fairly close to the ring to make construction easier." Twoearle narrowed her search, before taking control of the craft and flying them towards the nearest asteroid field, just beyond Meows. Once she was close enough she began scanning with her sensors.
The entire time Isabella sat in the passenger's seat not really able to participate. At first she was excited about their journey through space, but the distance between celestial objects was so far that it left her with nothing to look at. She soon became bored with the usual starry horizon, and tried to play Armoured Galz on her phone only to discover they were out of range of the servers on Catyu.
"...Wow. Space is lame."
"Tell me about it."
It ended up taking them just shy of half an hour to finally locate the portal. It was built directly into the side of a large asteroid, with what looked like a large port for ships attached to it, though all the docks were empty. Twoearle only hesitated for long enough to double check the portal connected to Earth, before flying through its watery surface.
There was a similar port on the other side, and this one had a ship docked. From the window Isabella could see a few Ultiroids carrying sacks and crates up the loading ramp at the direction of a small number of much larger Elemerians. Isabella narrowed her eyes for a moment, squinting to make out the shape of one particular one over the distance.
"That's Orchidmantisguildy!" She barked into her communicator. "Red! You said you were going to deal with Orchidmantisguildy!"
Red's voice came back clearly after a few seconds of delay they were in the same solar system. "He ran away."
"Damn it!" Isabella snapped and ran down the hall.
"Where are you going?" Twoearle called out to her.
"I'm not letting that creep escape again!" Isabella snapped back over the communicator.
"What about the ring?"
"Just pick up Red! She can deal with it!"
Pink strode down the stairs to the loading bay, and yanked down the switch to open the ramp. There was a woosh of air, and without hesitation Pink leapt off the back of the ship, intending to land on the dock superhero style. Unfortunately, due to the low gravity of the asteroid, the effect was far less dramatic than she intended, and she scowled with irritation as she gently drifted to the ground and landed with a soft tap rather than the bang she hoped for.
Her landing was so soft the Ultiroids hadn't even noticed her arrival, as caught up as they were moving their valuable goods to the ship. Now that she was closer, Isabella could see that their cargo just looked like the contents of Kim's creepy collection. Why the heck would Elemerians want a bunch of fingernails and knotted hair anyway?
"Hey!" She yelled, and all the aliens turned to face her, and her eyes narrowed on the tall mantis man. "So you crawled away to live another day, Cockroachguildy."
One brown Elemerian with two long antennae pointed a finger at himself, confused. "Who, me?"
"She was talking to me." Orchidmantisguildy growled and shouldered past him towards the Twintail Warrior. "I wasn't expecting to see you here either, Princess!" He called out.
"Whatever." She summoned her hammer and stalked forwards. "No more posturing, no more games, and no more running. YOU DIE HERE!" With a roar she broke into a charge, raised her hammer up, and brought it down towards him.
"Sorry, Princess, but that wasn't in my plans." He took a step back and grabbed an Ultiroid by the neck while slamming his scythe into the ground with the other. The hook of his weapon sunk into the rock, while he brought the stunned little black alien up to block Tailpink's attack.
"Wha-?" Pink eyebrows furrowed with surprise, as the head of her hammer smashed into the Ultiroid's face and it exploded immediately. With so little gravity, Pink was immediately flung off her feet and into the open space above the asteroid. She flailed in the low gravity, expecting to fall down to its surface but she realised she wasn't slowing down as she was launched far from her foes.
Meanwhile, Orchidmantisguildy who had prepared for the explosion before hand sneered, and clung to his scythe that was lodged firmly in the rock. "Goodbye, Princess!"
"ORCHIDMANTISGUILDY!" She screamed, but without anything to hold onto all she could do was float away helplessly as the aliens continued stocking up their ship with looted leaving. "I'll get you one day! You hear me?! One day there'll be nowhere left for you to run!"
The alien waved a hand at her in a disparaging farewell, before calmly walking up the ramp to the ship. The door sealed behind him, and the last survivors of the combined invasion of Earth and Catyu fled, their ship vanishing out of sight in an instant.
"...Want me to come pick you up?" Twoearle asked over the communicator.
Pink slumped in place and groaned, before answering. "Yeah."
"...I mean it's kinda funny when you think about it." Twoearle continued as the ship came closer. "I mean you were so convinced this was your moment, and he just totally embarrassed you."
"Twoearle, don't be mean." Red's voice came over the coms, chiding in tone.
Wait, so if Red heard all that. "...Senpai did you hear that?"
There was a moment's pause before Aika replied. "I'm sorry, Pink."
Deflated, Tailpink clicked off her communicator. The humiliation! She grit her teeth and clenched her fists with frustration before howling into the void. "OOOOOOORCHIDMANTISGUIIIIILDY!"
